


Arcana Maior

by jaztice



Category: Now You See Me (Movies)
Genre: Angst with a Happy Ending, Gen, and I mean lots, because for some reason we all needed that right, dylan had a rough time growing up, enjoy the suffering, lots of headcanons, this is a dylan character study centered around the tarot major arcana cards
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-08-22
Updated: 2016-08-22
Packaged: 2018-08-10 09:17:40
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,939
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7839160
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/jaztice/pseuds/jaztice
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Dylan Shrike has always been a fool.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Arcana Maior

**Author's Note:**

  * For [justlawyerthings](https://archiveofourown.org/users/justlawyerthings/gifts), [Reidluver](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Reidluver/gifts).



**0) The Fool**

The first time Dylan felt like a fool, he was four. His father had just shown him a magic trick, and Dylan couldn’t figure it out.

“Is it up your sleeve?” he asked.

“No.”

“Is it in your pocket?”

“No.”

He got angry, frustrated he couldn’t figure it out, and he wanted to cry. He wasn’t dumb! He knew his dad’s magic was just tricks! So why couldn’t he figure out where the coin was?

“Oh Dylan, don’t be upset.” His father smiled and reached behind his ear, and when he pulled his hand back, the coin was there. “See? Sometimes the magic was in you all along.”

He giggled, his father placing the coin in his hand. “How about I teach you that trick one day, huh?”

Dylan nodded, eager to show his dad he could be just as great a magician as him. He slipped the coin in his pocket and smiled wide, following his dad into the kitchen for dinner.

 

**1) The Magician**

Dylan thought of himself as a magician proper by the time he was six. In first grade, he brought a deck of cards to school with him and impressed his classmates during playground.

“Was this your card?” he asked, holding one up to the girl in front of him. Everyone gasped, surprised and amazed. They thought he was actually magic! Even the teachers were impressed – they told him he should do tricks like that for the talent show in a few months. That made Dylan beam with pride.

When he got home, the first thing he did was tell his dad. He ruffled his hair and smiled wider than Dylan had ever seen him.

“Mark my words, kiddo,” he said. “You keep this up, and you’ll be going places for sure.”

 

**2) The High Priestess**

Dylan loved his dad, but he also loved his mom. She was beautiful and kind and understanding, and she and his dad were always happy together. And she made the best peanut butter and jelly sandwiches ever. Whenever he showed her a new trick, she smiled wide and shook her head.

“My boys and their tricks,” she’d always say. “You make my life more magical than it already is.”

Dylan’s mom always knew what to say.

 

**3) The Empress**

Dylan was seven the first time he remembered his dad being upset. He came home with exhaustion and anger in his eyes, barely saying a word to him and his mother before locking himself in his room. When Dylan asked his mom about it, she just shrugged. “Bad day at work, probably,” she said. “Sometimes, the crowds are just tough.”

He eventually came out of his room for dinner and apologized for not saying anything. “Someone scammed me today,” he said, speaking mainly to Mom, but Dylan stared at his peas and listened. “Another magician, I think. Exposed my trick and took the crowd. Stole my earnings too.”

“That’s horrible,” Dylan’s mom said, appalled. “How dare they? They know just as well as you how hard you have to work to earn anything at all.”

“I know.” His dad fell silent, and when Dylan looked up, he was frowning. But then he saw him staring and put on a smile, rubbing Dylan’s head.

“Don’t worry, Dylan,” he said, “I’ll think up more tricks, ones no one has ever thought of before. This kind of thing won’t happen again.”

 

**4) The Emperor**

His father lied. It happened again. And again, and again. Every day he came home worse for wear. Every day his mother smiled less. Kids started making fun of Dylan’s magic at school, and he kept his deck of cards at home.

When Dylan was nine, practicing a trick in front of a mirror, he could hear his parents arguing in the next room over.

“He exposed every trick I had, every single one!” his dad yelled. “How was I supposed to know he would do that? Who the hell is going to come see my shows now?”

“Who the hell is going to pay for our son to eat?” his mom yelled back. “I work day and night for this family, Lionel. Day and night! And you and your magic, it’s beautiful and amazing but damn it, unless you can pay the rent without a show, there’s nothing magical about it! Find a way to earn money, or we learn to start living without it! Do you understand me?”

Dylan flinched, the cards falling out of his hand and spreading across the floor.

 

**5) The Hierophant**

A week later, Dylan got into a fight at school. A kid in his class had called his father a fake magician; Dylan punched him in the nose, and then the kids’ friends punched him everywhere else. He came home bruised and bleeding. The school decided to suspend him.

“I’m not allowed to do magic at school anymore,” he told his dad at dinner. He couldn’t stop staring at his food. “They said I need discipline.”

His father and mother shared a look, both with eyes too tired for Dylan’s liking. But then his dad smiled again.

“Play their little game, Dylan,” he said, “but you hold onto your magic. One day it’ll be the only thing you can hold on to.”

 

**6) The Lovers**

His father died a year later, trapped in a safe at the bottom of the Hudson River.

Dylan hated it, hated every second of every minute of every day after his father died. He hated the hole in his chest that wouldn’t go away, he hated crying at every little thing he saw that reminded him of his dad. He hated the man that’d driven his father to lock himself in a death trap and drown for the magic he loved with all his heart. He hated the world for doing this to a ten-year-old boy.

And he wanted to hate his mother too, his mother that hadn’t come to the river to watch his father’s show, his mother that hadn’t been there when her child sat on the riverbank and waited in the cold for his father to come out of the water. But he couldn’t hate her. He really couldn’t.

Dylan’s mother didn’t stop crying until months after his father’s death. The last time she’d told him she loved him had been a month before he died.

 

**7) The Chariot**

“It’s going to be hard without your father, now, okay Dylan?” His mother gave him her pleading eyes, the ones he knew meant she was scared and just needed him to trust her. “I need you to be strong. I need you to tough through this with me. Can you do that?”

He nodded, and his mother gave him the barest hint of a smile.

 

**8) Strength**

Dylan didn’t touch a deck of cards again until sixth grade. His mother found him in his room one day, holding the box in his hands, staring at it like it held all the secrets in the world. He realized he was crying.

“He was right, you know,” she said. Dylan looked up, his sight blurred and unfocused. “About magic. Sometimes it’s the only thing you can hold on to.”

A few tears fell down his cheeks, and his sight cleared. His mom was smiling.

“Keep practicing, Dylan,” she said. “Do it for him.”

 

**9) The Hermit**

For the next few years, Dylan did nothing but practice. He shuffled cards. He bent spoons. He hid doves in his sleeves and coins in people’s ears. He learned every trick he could, used any props he could find, practiced on the street sometimes to earn a little money for his mom. He practiced the classic rabbit-out-of-a-hat trick at work, hidden in a supply closet from his boss. He learned how to hypnotize people at school, teachers and students and even the principal once, when he was brave enough.

He didn’t have any friends at school. Kids saw him as an enigma, the weird kid with a deck of cards and no desire for social interaction. Bullies crawled out of the woodwork like worms, trying to get him to snap. A few succeeded, the few that managed to figure out who he was. Most just beat him up behind the gym, frustrated that no matter how many times they stole his lunch money or his cards, they always left empty handed.

In seventh grade, his mom stopped asking where his cuts and bruises had come from. She just handed him an ice pack and band aids and squeezed his shoulder, told him to be ready for dinner. Told him not to listen to what they said.

He didn’t, usually. But it was hard.

It was always hard.

 

**10) The Wheel**

“This _isn’t fair_.”

Dylan couldn’t see straight. He couldn’t see at all. All he could hear was the blood rushing in his head, the antiseptic smell of the room around him making his already nauseous stomach twist like a pretzel, the cold rushing of the stale air conditioning hitting his back like bricks. His mother was in front of him, staring at him with her pleading eyes again. Always with the pleading eyes. What more did she want from him?

“Dylan, please,” she said. Her voice cracked, and it broke Dylan’s heart. “I know this is hard but–”

“Hard?” he asked. “ _Hard?_ Mom, you’re going to _die_. You’re going to die and you’re not letting them help you? Why?”

“We don’t have the money,” she said. She was crying. “You know we don’t. I’d rather see you have a future than waste our money.”

“ _Well I don’t!_ ” he yelled. He was fifteen and angry, so angry all the time, and half the time he didn’t understand why. It felt like the world was spinning out of control, sucking him into a whirlpool he couldn’t escape from. “Mom, please! You can’t do this to me, you don’t understand, not after Dad, _please_ –”

“Dylan…”

She stood and wrapped her arms around him tight, pressing his head against her chest, and Dylan sobbed and hugged her back. This wasn’t fair, it wasn’t fair it wasn’t fair it _wasn’t fair_. He couldn’t watch another one of his parents die. He couldn’t.

“Why?” he asked, his voice cracking. “Why does this keep happening to us?”

She just sighed, the sound heavy in Dylan’s ears.

“I guess our luck just ran out.”

 

**11) Justice**

At age sixteen, Dylan started learning everything he could about Thaddeus Bradley.

He researched other things, other organizations and names he’d heard his mother yell into the phone, the ones that’d left them penniless and alone in a world that didn’t give two shits about them, but Thaddeus Bradley put a face to it all. He’d started the whole downward spiral, the whole trip straight to hell that Dylan had endured for the past seven years. And the man was going to pay for it all. Of that, Dylan was sure.

He started planning and plotting, charting out a course for his life to take. He made lists of things to do, the people to find, the things to destroy. The French bank. Alcorn. Tressler Insurance. Thaddeus Bradley.

Dylan was going to rain justice down upon them all.

 

**12) The Hanged Man**

At age eighteen, by some miracle, Dylan got into college.

Cornell University, full scholarship. In all honesty, he was more surprised than his mom.

“I always knew you had it in you,” she said, nudging him. Her face was gaunt and there were bags under her eyes that’d been there forever. “You’re smarter than you think, Dylan. Always have been.”

 _Not smart enough to stop your cancer_ , he thought, but he didn’t dare say it. She was happy. She deserved to be happy for once.

They had dinner at a fancy restaurant for the first time in years. The last time had been back when he was eight – his dad took them out for Christmas dinner. He remembered his dad spilling wine all over the table and cleaning it up with the snap of his fingers, the wait staff applauding and his mother’s laugh. He remembered thinking his dad was the greatest man he’d ever met.

He still was, really. Dylan hadn’t met a lot of great men in his lifetime. He hadn’t met a lot of good ones either.

The only bad thing about college would be having to leave his mom, but he was still nearby. Only a few miles away, really. He told her to call him if she ever needed anything. She agreed with a nod, a twinkling light returned to her eyes.

 

**13) Death**

Dylan’s mother died on the floor of their apartment when he was nineteen. He hadn’t seen her in four months.

He didn’t even get to say goodbye.

 

**14) Temperance**

Life passed him by without him even noticing after that. He went through college. Went through grad school. Pulled the right strings and drew the right attention to get the FBI Academy to recruit him. Passed with flying colors, earned a good position in the Bureau. Within a few short years, he’d maneuvered himself to just the right position. Now he just had to put all the other players in place.

The Eye had contacted him when he was eighteen, initiated him just before his mom died. They told him his father was a great magician and a better man, and they knew he was capable of great things too.

He asked if he could initiate the next four members with a plan of his own design, and they agreed. He wondered if they knew how much of that plan was a vendetta. He wondered if they cared.

Dylan met Fuller at the Quantico, during training, and they’d been close ever since. He was the first friend he’d had since second grade.

Things were finally looking okay.

 

**15) The Devil**

It’d been thirty years since Lionel Shrike had died at the bottom of a river. Thirty years of anger boiling in Dylan’s chest like a storm. The past few weeks had been Dylan’s plan coming to life, beautiful and perfect and incredibly wrought by the most talented magicians he’d ever seen. And now here he was, the Devil himself, staring in complete and utter shock at the monster he created from behind iron bars he’d never escape.

Thaddeus Bradley, the magician debunker, caught and trapped by the very thing he despised.

Dylan wanted to hold onto the look on his face and never let it go.

But days later, in the quiet of his own room, Dylan realized the gnawing in his stomach hadn’t gone away. The restless energy he’d had since his father’s death was still there, brewing below the surface, like it’d never disappeared at all.

He felt empty, and raw, and terrified. He’d done everything he’d planned, put everything in motion, and nothing had changed. He was still the same.

The Devil was caged, but his family was gone.

And no matter what he did, they were never coming back.

 

**16) The Tower**

“Tell me you’re safe.”

Dylan had never felt this panicked, this out of his depth, not since that night on the river. They were gone, the Horsemen were gone, and it was all his fault. He hadn’t paid attention. He’d let them expose themselves, put themselves in the limelight, and now he was a wanted fugitive and they were nowhere to be found. He couldn’t lose them, not now. Not like this. He’d dragged them down with him into the Eye, for a personal vendetta that hadn’t meant a thing, and now he was terrified they’d be paying the price for his mistakes.

The Devil answered on the other end, and Dylan felt like he was drowning.

 

**17) The Star**

Three missed messages from Alma.

Dylan checked his phone on the plane and listened to the voicemails. Worried, cautious, angry, in that order. Each one had a little less English and a little more French, a few extra curse words than before, a growing agitation in her voice that Dylan remembered all too well. He needed to call her; she deserved to know what was happening. But not now. Not with Thaddeus Bradley close enough to hear, not with the Horsemen kidnapped and running around Macau. He had to sort this out first. Alma would understand when he explained. He hoped.

He listened to the first message again, letting her voice distract him for a little while. They hadn’t seen each other in months. He missed her.

 

**18) The Moon**

“You’re not our leader anymore, okay?”

Dylan stared at Atlas, the words hitting him harder than he cared to admit, the sounds of the market around them fading away. Atlas wouldn’t look him in the eye, stepping away, hiding the stick up his sleeve. He didn’t understand why that hurt so much.

“You’re not our hero,” he continued, “you’re not FBI, you’re not a magician. You’re not really anything.

“A-and we trusted you, for a year.” Atlas’s eyes flicked up, his hands twitching nervously, and Dylan could feel a lump in his throat that he tried to ignore. He was right. Atlas was right. Dylan wasn’t anything, not anymore.

It just hurt a lot more, hearing Danny say it like this.

“So if you really want to help us,” he said, his voice cracking, “if you really– If you really want to help us you would leave.”

No deal, no compromise, just a statement. One Dylan didn’t want to believe.

_They don’t need me._

He clenched his jaw, watched Atlas’s face carefully, but there was nothing more he could see. The Horsemen didn’t need him. This entire fiasco was his fault, and they knew it. Who would want Dylan after learning what he really was?

“Alright,” he managed, backing up. One step. Two. He ducked his head. “Fine.”

He slipped away, back into the crowd. Atlas was gone, not even looking after him.

Dylan suddenly wanted a drink.

He probably would’ve gotten one too had he not seen Atlas get punched in the stomach.

 

**19) The Sun**

“Your Horsemen have something my son wants,” Tressler said, his hand on Walter’s shoulder. Dylan’s legs felt like jelly, his head spinning and every part of him aching. The cuts on his face stung. The handcuffs he was wearing were cutting into his wrists.

He’d never felt more alone in his entire life.

“And like any good parent,” Tressler continued, “I’m going to do everything I can to get it for him. So you are going to tell us where it, and they, are.”

A smirk, one that made Dylan’s heart rate double.

“Now.”

Before he could stop himself, Dylan’s mind snapped to the Horsemen; Danny acting like a total prick in the interrogation room, Henley showing Dylan her newest card trick, Merritt cracking bad jokes with him when he took them out for coffee, Jack’s mildly terrified look when he realized the FBI agent he’d beaten up was actually a member of the Eye, Lula’s overjoyed face when he told her she was going to be a Horsemen. He remembered them laughing and crying and bickering like there was no tomorrow. He remembered Henley squeezing his hand before leaving, hugging Jack in the middle of the night after a nightmare. He remembered buying Merritt a new hat after Danny “accidentally” shredded his old one, Lula showing him her now-perfected “Pull A Hat Out Of A Rabbit” trick. He remembered Atlas’s face in the market, hurt and scared and guilty, refusing to look Dylan in the Eye.

He couldn’t save his parents, but he could save them.

The thought made him smile.

“No.”

 

**20) Judgment**

Cold water and darkness and a box made of steel. He couldn’t see. He couldn’t get out. Water was rushing in, frigid and merciless and oh god, oh god he didn’t want to die like this. He was trapped, trapped with no way out in a steel safe just like his father. He banged on the walls, tried to pry open the door, yelling and kicking and eventually, he just sobbed. There was no way out. Not this time.

 _You’re dying for them_ , he thought. _Better than dying for nothing._

He didn’t get very far down that train of thought before the memories resurfaced.

Screaming, crying, clinging to a metal railing for dear life, yelling for his dad with a hoarse voice that would never be answered. Scared and cold and totally alone. His dad’s face, moments before he was locked in the safe, giving him a small, brave smile.

_I always have a trick up my sleeve._

The watch.

Dylan pulled the pouch out of his pocket, barely knowing what he was doing. The water was past his chin. He looked at the watch, panicking, terrified. He found a notch in the side and pulled out a tiny metal pick. The watch face glowed blue.

 _Open the door_ , he thought. He ducked down and found the hole, marked by glowing lines, trying to fit the pick inside. It was tiny, so tiny and nimble and his hands were shaking too much for it to work. Another gasp for air, probably his last. There was just water in the safe now. Water and him and the slightest hope he might get out of this alive.

The water was so cold, and it was so dark, and he was so, so alone.

The pick slid into the hole. The lock unlocked.

With the last of his strength, Dylan pushed the door open. He could hear its hinges creak through the murky water, slowly drifting out into the bottom of the river.

Air left his lungs. Water flooded in. It hurt, everything hurt.

It was so cold.

A light, a murky light through murky water. A fading light. His own light. Everything was dark, everything was gone. He was alone.

He was all alone.

 

**21) The World**

Water flew out of his mouth and Dylan coughed, trying to get any liquid out of lungs. He was cold and wet and lying on something solid. Concrete? What was he doing here?

He opened his eyes, and there they were – his Horsemen. Jack, Merritt, Lula, Danny. They all looked so worried, smiles of relief spreading on their faces when they realized he was alive. That struck him as odd. Didn’t they not need him anymore?

He realized Danny was soaking wet – he must’ve jumped in and saved him. Why? Why had they saved him?

 _Because they care about you, Dylan_.

The thought made him smile.

They got back to the shop, cleaned up, organized their show. Flew to London, put it on. Jack raced ahead on his motorbike, heedless of the men with guns, and Dylan protected him without even thinking. Tressler’s men pulled a knife on Lula and he was out of his seat before he could stop himself.

They got away, made it to the Observatory in Greenwich. He called Alma and told her everything. He texted Henley and told her they were okay.

That night they sat on the floor of the study, wrapped up in blankets and pillows with hot chocolate and cards scattered on the rug. They were all laughing, sharing stories, comparing tricks, being themselves. Jack held Lula’s hand. Danny wore Merritt’s hat. Dylan just smiled, happier than he’d ever been in his life, and wondered if they’d think any less of him if he started to cry.

When Dylan Shrike was ten years old, he’d lost his entire world.

And now, thirty years later, he’d found it again.

**Author's Note:**

> https://www.trustedtarot.com/card-meanings/
> 
> (gifted to my two biggest NYSM fans. Thanks for helping me, guys)


End file.
